Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

Tag Archives: loans

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 15, 2017:

Five Republican Congressmen fired off a letter last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Fed Chair Janet Yellen, and Acting U.S. Comptroller Keith Noreika, demanding that they repudiate the Obama administration’s successful and continuing efforts to strangle financially gun shops and other supposedly “high-risk” and “disreputable” businesses. Called Operation Choke Point, the program continues despite declamations from the Justice Department to the contrary.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, July 20, 2017:

King Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz

Investors in high-yield bonds issued by small fracking companies are getting nervous. Last year those bonds, according to Bloomberg, gained some 38 percent as they rebounded from lows set earlier. In June they slipped two percent. In the bond business, that’s enough to make bond fund managers and individual investors nervous. It’s bad enough that the S&P 500 Energy Sector Index of energy stocks has lost 16 percent so far this year. What’s worse is the vicious cycle that frackers find themselves in.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, May 26, 2017:

Xi Jinping, no friend of freedom

The Wall Street Journal’s claim that China’s surveillance state, which now records the behaviors of foreign companies operating there, is only intended to “monitor and rate” them falls far short of the communist government’s real intentions. Using sophisticated tracking technology — meters in chimneys monitoring air pollution, recording of excessive energy usage by a company’s meters, and so on — it intends to change the behavior of those companies to keep them in line with state policy and objectives.

Perhaps without knowing it, Moody’s downgrade of China one full notch on Wednesday exposed the fallacy of managed economies: that government bureaucrats with fancy degrees from the University of Chicago, Harvard, or Yale know what they’re doing. One of those fallacies that have been promoted for years came from Yale grad Arthur Laffer as far back as the Reagan administration. On the surface it sounds eminently logical: cut taxes and the economy will grow. The fallacy is knowing just how much to cut, whose to cut, when to cut, and how long to cut.

The Laffer Curve undergirds the whole idea of “supply side economics” –

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 25, 2017:

China GDP

Moody’s Investors Service, one of the big three credit-rating services in the country, downgraded China’s creditworthiness one full notch on Wednesday. It moved the world’s second-largest economy from Aa3 (“high quality [with] very low risk”) to A1 (Upper-medium grade [with] low credit risk”). It explained why:

The downgrade reflects Moody’s expectations that China’s financial strength will erode somewhat over the coming years, with economy-wide debt continuing to grow as potential growth slows.

That “potential growth” has been slowing since at least 2010. In that year Chinese government agencies reported growth in excess of 10 percent. By 2014, it had slowed to 7.3 percent, to 6.9 percent in 2015, and is now at a reported 6.7 percent.

Wall Street’s “complacency index” — a measure of confidence that stock prices will continue to rise — hit the highest level since 1993 on Monday. Alternatively called the VIX (for volatility index), it is often referred to as Wall Street’s “investor fear gauge.”

Translation: Investors presently appear to have no fear. The index compares investors betting, through their purchases of options, that the market will go up, to those betting to the contrary. When investor fear is high, the VIX will move above 30 or even higher. When fear declines, the VIX trades below 20. During the day on Monday the VIX touched 9.72, a level not seen in 24 years.

So complacent have investors become that the VIX has dropped by 45 percent just since April 13. By comparison,

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 17, 2017:

Congressman Justin Amash

When Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.) learned on Friday that President Trump intended to resuscitate the Export-Import Bank by naming two people to its board (it has been limping along with just three out of five board members present), he nailed it, tweeting, “ExIm corporate welfare bank is the symbol of D.C. cronyism. It steals from taxpayers to subsidize big corporations. End ExIm. Drain the Swamp.”

For a while it looked as if the Ex-Im Bank was for all intents and purposes dead. In 2015, the House failed to renew its charter for the first time since 1945. However,

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, April 17, 2017:

Many were surprised when President Trump named the EPA’s fiercest enemy – Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt – to head up the agency. For years Pruitt has raged against the agency for overstepping its bounds and writing rules, mandates, and regulations that negatively impacted the fossil fuel industry. He sued the agency more than a dozen times in the last eight years.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 29, 2017:

Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein fined Bank of America $45 million on Thursday for deliberately and intentionally harming a young couple who got caught up the real estate collapse and had to downsize. Erik and Renee Sundquist made a down payment on a smaller home and borrowed the balance from Countrywide Home Loans. When they couldn’t make the payments on that loan, the couple was advised by Bank of America, which owned Countrywide, to default as a precondition for a loan modification in order to lower their payments.

Klein described what happened next in his ruling in Sundquist v. Bank of America as a series of events so fantastic and bizarre as to be nearly incomprehensible:

Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (shown), will stand trial for another instance of corruption relating to the scandal uncovered by Operation Car Wash, a corruption case that has engulfed Petrobras, the state-owned energy company, since 2014.

This time the prosecution is getting some help from one of those already tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison:

In the early days, Elon Musk (shown above) made his fortune the usual way: by creating products and services that people could use, which they paid for using their own money, to improve their lives. Today, however, he has found a better way: using taxpayer guarantees to help fund his new ventures and reduce his risks while he enjoys the profits if they succeed.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 12, 2016:

One Wells Fargo Center – Charlotte, North Carolina

As earnings season on Wall Street starts, investors in the big banks are just now learning about unfunded revolving lines of credit (revolvers) that those banks extended to oil and energy related companies when times were better.

Ten of the largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, just disclosed that they have $147 billion in unfunded revolvers, which are likely to expand their exposure to the energy industry just when they would rather reduce it.

Those banks have been setting aside loan loss reserves amounting to billions in anticipation of the inevitable:

From a distance the jobs report issued on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) looked pretty good: 215,000 new jobs were created by the economy in March while earnings, year-over-year, increased by 2.3 percent. The average hours worked remained stable, and the labor force participation rate rose off its recent record lows.

The numbers came from two sources: payroll numbers provided by businesses directly to the Labor Department, and household numbers provided by phone-call surveys.

In looking at the numbers, Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies LLC, a massive global investment firm headquartered in New York City, said that “we continue to generate a lot of jobs” without asking what kind. A closer look reveals

With crude oil up more than 30 percent over the last week, and companies like SeaDrill and Chesapeake Energy up 125 percent and 250 percent, respectively, over the last five days, short covering has persuaded some that the bottom is in. Investors, especially short sellers, in the oil patch need lots of risk capital, a high risk tolerance, and a short memory.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 29, 2016:

Energy producers are facing challenges that are threatening the existence of not only marginal, highly-leveraged producers, but large companies as well.

Canadian-based Suncor is just one example. Known for its Sunoco brand (now Petro-Canada), Canada’s largest crude-oil producer reported three weeks ago that it suffered a fourth-quarter loss of $1.45 billion and that it was slashing its capex (capital expenditures) for 2016 by 10 percent, forcing its expected 2016 production to fall by the same amount. It is also selling assets in order to keep paying its dividends to nervous investors. But Steve Williams, the company’s CEO, told equally nervous participants that “We will be one of the last guys standing.”

Lamar McKay, BP’s deputy chief executive, did the same: “Times are tough. You’d almost call them brutal right now. But we will adapt. We will make it.” This from the world’s sixth-largest oil and gas company which lost $6.5 billion in 2015 and was forced to lay off more than 3,000 employees.

John Hess, CEO of the Hess Corporation, also pumped his company’s resilience in the face of low crude prices. A much smaller company than BP, Hess Corporation suffered a loss of $3 billion last year, its first in more than a decade. Said Hess: “Our company has some of the best acreage [in North Dakota]. We can be more resilient as prices recover.”

Taken together, the oil industry worldwide has cut more than 300,000 jobs since the summer of 2014 (the peak of oil prices), while capex of nearly $1.5 trillion will be cancelled between 2015 and 2019, according to the conference sponsor. So far nearly 50 U.S. oil producers have filed for bankruptcy protection this year, with many more sure to follow this spring as banks readjust their reserve valuations used to back up their loans. This could imperil more than $17 billion in debt held by banks.

The most important revelation at the conference came from Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, when he said that his country — despite rumors to the contrary that had driven crude oil prices temporarily higher — had absolutely no plans whatsoever to cut production in order to support higher prices. On that news alone, NYMEX crude oil fell $2 a barrel on Friday.

One of the problems facing these executives is the fact that frackers continue to produce in the face of falling rig counts and smaller workforces. Peak oil production touched 9.6 million barrels a day last year and remains at 9.1 million bpd. Daniel Yergin, the founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), now a subsidiary of IHS Inc., expects things to get worse — perhaps much worse — before they begin to get better:

This year is going to be very rough on the industry, very turbulent. We think that the decline in U.S. production is going to get more serious — another 600,000 to 800,000 barrels a day in this kind of price environment.

Globally the energy industry cut capex spending in 2015 by nearly 30 percent compared to 2014, while those in the United States have cut even further: an estimated 40 percent. For 2016, IHS CERA expects several large U.S. producers to cut spending by 50 percent compared to last year.

In the meantime, there’s another problem: where to store the surplus crude oil, estimated to be piling up at the rate of 1.5 to two million barrels every day. Empty tankers are being leased to store the surplus, called “floating storage,” waiting for demand to pick up (or supplies to dwindle). Now there is “rolling storage,” with 20,000 empty railroad tank cars sitting in sidings and storage yards across the country. Salt caverns and tankers are almost at capacity, and companies such as the Musket Corporation are taking advantage. Musket is a privately-held shipping company in Houston that built its business shipping crude oil by rail. But now it is in the storage business, finding and leasing empty tank cars to store the surplus until that “turnaround” day arrives, when demand exceeds production, and the surplus can be sopped up.

Since there is little evidence on the horizon to support higher crude oil prices, oil industry executives are running out of options and optimism. It will take more than a stiff upper lip to jawbone higher oil prices. In the meantime, for many it’s a matter of survival until that happy day arrives.

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, February 29, 2016:

Cover of Pollyanna

Author Eleanor Porter would be proud. Not only did her 1913 children’s book Pollyanna establish the “Pollyanna Principle” (someone with an excessively optimistic outlook despite facing all manner of difficulties), it set in motion eleven sequels by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lammis Smith. There were movies starting Mary Pickford and Hayley Mills.

All three authors were present in Houston last week, at least in spirit. First,

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, February 10, 2016:

It’s now apparent that Aubrey McClendon didn’t see the bumper sticker that appeared on cars following the last energy crash: “Please, God, give me one more boom and I promise not to screw it up.”

McClendon, along with a partner, $50,000, and 10 employees, started Chesapeake Energy in 1989. The company grew exponentially as the fracking revolution took off and up until recently the company employed 5,500 people and had annual revenues of $11 billion. Its stock (CHK) soared,

According to three college professors, the answer is “very.” After interviewing 32 drivers and users of Uber, Lyft, and conventional cab services in London and San Francisco, the Uber and Lyft drivers and customers were the clear winners. The drivers had more freedom to select their working hours, many of them driving part-time to supplement their full-time work. The ride-sharing customers not only paid less than they would have for regular taxis, they felt safer, they knew more about the driver and his ratings from previous customers, and could track and follow the driver as he wended his way towards their location.

They also enjoyed getting to know their Uber or Lyft driver, discovering that they were just like them – ordinary people making a living and enjoying the process. Wrote the professors:

The movie White Zombie, a horror film in 1932 starring Bela Lugosi, featured zombies as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician. The Export-Import Bank doesn’t quite fit the definition, but it’s close.

Crafted by socialists surrounding FDR in 1934 and given life by an executive order, Ex-Im was granted permanent status as an agency in 1945. It has been repeatedly, endlessly, mindlessly resurrected almost 20 times since then, until the end of June.

It’s been just two weeks since the Export-Import Bank’s charter lapsed — that “fund of corporate welfare” as criticized by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 before reality set in — and two predictable things have occurred: The world continues to turn without it, and K-Street lobbyists are busy trying to resurrect it.

With massive radio advertising and extensive help from the media publishing op-eds in its favor, the chances are increasing that the zombie will come back to life.

The deceased bank, touted as offering loan guarantees to small businesses wanting to do business overseas but unable to obtain financing in the regular way, was turned into a slush fund of free money to the country’s largest corporations: